In those dark teen years of the early-to-mid Seventies, many years before consumer VCRs existed and became commonplace -and were soon taken for granted in no time by kids who grew-up thinking that you'd always been able to see something from television a second time, on your own schedule- I can recall that the Monday after the first NFL weekend of the year, my friends and I at J.F.K. Junior High in North Miami Beach spent time trying to properly identify the order of the identifiable NFL players during this quick-cutting video montage of NBC's.
And frankly, wonder whether or not ABC would be updating their intro -yet again- that night for Monday Night Football, which, in retrospect, they actually changed less than they did the 'third man' in the booth after popular Don Meredith left to pursue entertainment options in Hollywood.
1984 ad for Safeway's Super Store -They've got a sale on VCRs, only $369; I guess the savings gets passed on to you! -LOL! http://youtu.be/T6mD2bZc9w8
The three American TV network's football themes gripped my friends and I from the start, and quickly became embedded in our young brains, which perhaps best explains why when you see them again on YouTube, you're struck by the fact that not just for my friends and I, but for millions of other sports fans alive then who watched them, they still remain preferable to anything on the air now, esp on ESPN or Fox-TV. And they say as much in the YouTube comments, too.
When my friends and I at JFK got together at lunch, P.E. or after school, and it turned out that someone hadn't been paying close attention to the fact that the first establishing shot of the NBC intro was one from the the defending NFL champion Dolphins locker room... well, you suddenly weren't suchan NFL expert after all.
Yes, we did not grade our friends' NFL prowess on a Bell Curve. It was always sink-or-swim.
How many players in the three videos I've posted can you name? (And how many of what would now be considered illegal hits?)
To name but a few: Danny Abramowicz -fades from his gold-colored Saints pants to the gold of the NBC text- Larry Little, Larry Csonka, Joe Namath, Essex Johnson, Ken Stabler, Cliff Branch, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Tommy Casanova, Walter Payton, Craig Morton, Willie Brown...
And the player who is seen the longest in the NBC intro at the top is Dolphins All-Pro guard Bob Kuechenberg, who hits his own helmet at the end to show that he's strapped up and ready to play.
For those of you too young to know or remember, the Baltimore Colts were the defending NFL champs in 1971, having won Super Bowl V nine months before in Miami, beating the Dallas Cowboys 16-13 on the last play of the game.The very talented Minnesota Vikings had lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the previous Super Bowl, which is why Howard Cosell is so clearly animated about the match-up in what was then the second year of ABC'sMonday Night Football.
This is one of the best quality videos of 1970's NFL football that I've seen in years, and includes TV commercials.
Jodi Kantor, The Obamas Saturday at 11 p.m.; Sunday at 9:45 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. Eastern
Jodi Kantor, Washington correspondent for the New York Times, examines the relationship between President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama. The author reports on the changes to the couple's relationship as they entered the White House and their efforts to raise their children and balance their personal life against the requirements of their public life. Jodi Kantor discusses her book with David Brooks, columnist for the New York Times at Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in Washington, DC.
It's interesting to imagine whether or not someone in the audience will say something about the criticism of Kantor -from a pro-Michelle Obama p.o.v.- like how can she possibly know what was in Mrs. Obama's mind or what she may've said to Carla Bruni about the fish-bowl existence in The White House, when everyone knows, most especially David Brooks, her colleague, that Times columnist Maureen Dowd -a subject of past blog posts here- has made a speciality over the years of putting dozens and dozens of well-known Washington pols or power brokers on the psychiatrist couch in her columns, and tried to explain their actions without ever speaking to them, which many greatly resent.
She especially milked it in trying to draw distinctions or explain away the policy and emotional differences between Bush 41 and Bush 43, as well as the differences between their respective supporters and friends, like Brent Scowcroft's constant criticism of Bush 43's foreign policy. Just saying... BOLO!
Washington Post video: Air Florida #90 crash: Reflections on a tragic day in D.C. Washington Post reporters Jura Koncius and Peter Perl, who covered the crash for the paper 30 years ago, reflect on the events that day. January 13, 2012.
Later today in this space I will share some memories of that day, one of the days in my four years at IU that are still crystal clear to me because of all the many other South Florida-based Hoosiers on campus that I spoke to that day, all of whom, like me and our friends at FSU and in Gainesville, used Air Florida frequently, and were desperate to get details on passenger names.
I first got the news of the crash from Dan Rather via aCBS-News Special Report, as people on my floor started yelling for everyone to immediately turn on their TVs.
Above, the 14th Street Bridge, scene of the disaster 30 years ago, is framed at the top of this morning's Washington Post, with a photo showing an airline preparing to make that banking turn that all planes landing and taking-off at present-day Washington Reagan National Airport must do to avoid flying over the District's restricted space, something I came to take for granted when I lived there and watched the planes from Gravelly Point. "Long ago, the scene of disaster," The Washington Post, January 13, 2012
If you are a frequent visitor to this blog, it will probably not come as any great surprise to you that the Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel do NOT have a single story today about the 30th anniversary of the tragic Air Florida crash in their newspapers, despite the fact that Ft. Lauderdale was its final destination. I'm not telling you anything new when I say that's as good an indication as any of how truly bad and lazy journalism has gotten in South Florida.
National Geographic Channel - Seconds from Disaster: Air Florida Flight 90. Originally aired September 27, 2006. http://youtu.be/9yANjWmRS-U
Newt Gingrich 2012 campaign video: On Bain Capital: It's a Question of Character, Not Capitalism. January 11, 2012. http://youtu.be/yV6qUI5-ij4
Above, audio of NewtGingrich's appearance this afternoon on Sean Hannity's nationally-syndicated radio show, where he discussed Mitt Romney's track record with Bain Capital. He's rightly frustrated and at pains to explain the subtle yet important distinction of his having asked hard questions and demanded answers about what Romney actually did for the company, not Gingrich's questioning of the free enterprise system.
Unfortunately, among others, the Mainstream Media's punditocracy of the Left and the Right seem perfectly willing to ignore the clear distinction.
Even worse for well-informed voters who want someone who will really take the fight to President Obama and make him the focal point of the campaign, that large group ignoring the distinction also includes the sycophantic Republican Party 'Establishment' based in the Beltway and in the state capitols, who favor political coronations, not hard-fought floor fights on public policy issues.
(To figure out who these particular GOP characters are, just pictureJohn Sununu and his small-minded ilk taking up space in the Bush 41 White House, James Baker's State Dept., and carious agencies. Then, think of their many, many younger Gray Flannel suit-wearing underlings, who since then have either made it to Congress or became prominent in D.C. not by solving problems creatively, but rather by promising to finesse people they already know in exchange for money. Yes, lots and lots of smart but philosophically weak and outside-the-box averse guys. As it happens, to be honest, often the type of guys my then-girlfriends had broken-up with in order to be with me. The sort of well-educated but oblivious people who in the early Nineties often seemed more afraid of the fact that their whole worldview had been tossed upside-down by the fall of the Berlin Wall, and who DIDN'T want to recognize the bravery of the people in Eastern Europe and reward it by recognizing their independence, but who preferred instead that it stay in the Soviet sphere because that way they didn't have to think about it. Brent Scowcroft-types. These are THE people whom I most loathed of any I dealt with in the 15 years I lived and worked in Washington. And there are still lots of them who haven't learned a single lesson in twenty years.)
It's the same reason that the GOP establishment was so deathly afraid of the armies of retired accountants, military vets, college students and Libertarian-oriented school teachers interested in financial solvency in Washington who were the vanguard of the Tea Party movement -there was nothing they could offer to appease them. They didn't want something in return, they wanted concrete results in Congress.
Romney's hyper-sensitive and completely calculated "How dare you criticize free enterprise..." response to Gingrich's probing questions, when that's NOT what's at issue, is also mentioned as part of the larger problem with Romney.
Not just that he is thin-skinned regarding constructive criticism of his own record, per se, but as many surmise, Romney's chiseled jaw is, in fact, a glass jaw. One that Obama's minions will start jabbing and punching at long before the GOP convention if Romney wins. Think Chuck Wepner in the 1975 Ali fight.
In short, Romney is being criticized on the specifics of what HE did in specific situations when he was in charge. Period.
His ability -or inability- to make principled decisions and stick by them is exactly what's being criticized, and his own track record, post-Salt Lake City Olympics, is why that is such a mother lode.
Cold Reality of the Sunshine State: Mitt Romney has won two small states whose total # of votes cast were less than the # of absentee ballots already requested by voters in Florida...for an election three weeks from last night.
I had actually heard speculation about the way these numbers would probably sort themselves out last week -ironically, while I was on my way to the Supervisor of Elections office in Broward County HQ's in Ft. Lauderdale- but nothing has changed to make them inaccurate.
If anything, the contrast in numbers will only get exponentially larger, something that national reporters, columnists and anchors will find themselves unable to resist mentioning -over and over again- when Romney supporters crow about what sort of "mandate" they have. Just saying...
Orlando Sentinel Central Florida Political Pulse blog RPOF: Florida absentee ballot requests now more than Iowa, NH vote totals 2012 Florida presidential primary, 2012 presidential election — posted by scottpowers on January, 10 2012 11:17 AM
Absentee ballot requests in Florida now are double the total sought for the 2008 presidential primary and are more than all the votes cast in
Iowa and expected today in New Hampshire. That’s the word from the Republican Party of Florida, which argues there is no voter enthusiasm gap this year.
Looking west at Hollywood City Hall following the Hollywood City Commission meeting that led to the selection of Doug Hewett as the new City Manager.
January 6, 2012 photo by South Beach Hoosier.
Continuing their policy of the new economic realism, wherein stories about celebrities, diets and/or plastic surgery for women, toys for affluent people and their over-indulged kids, and crime stories involving women in danger or peril -especially mothers!- are deemed more important than what happens in local government that actually affects everyone -in part because they have lots of South Florida advertisers who want the not-so-educated female demographic for whom that is 'must-see TV'- Miami's local TV news operations threw a collective wet blanket on the big news coming out of Hollywood City Hall late last Friday afternoon.
Hollywood, Florida's 12th-largest city, selected 40-year old Fayetteville, N.C. Assistant City Manager Doug Hewettto be their new City Manager on a 5-2 vote, following hours of presentations by the six final candidates on what their strategy/ideas might be in their first few weeks in the position if they were selected to get the city moving forward.
The hiring of a young, personable, savvy and very well-regarded public administrator, who over a few shorts days seemed to pick-up on the small nuances of what makes Hollywood and its neighborhoods and its civic activist community unique and very hands-on, after touring the city and talking with many of the city's most well-known involved residents and civic activists, is a move that represents the final piece of a puzzle that many Hollywood taxpayers and observers firmly hope will stabilize what had become a very rocky ship of state of late in 2011 after the dismissal of former City Manager Cameron Benson, with bitter cleavages emerging all over the city between political/neighborhood activists and Fire/Police union members and their enthusiastic/exasperating supporters.
As I've stated in this space previously, many of the latter are still visibly outraged over the results of the September public referendum that forced much-tougher financial terms on their members -roughly a 12% pay cut to prevent actual dismissals of Fire/ Rescue and Police- and as of this writing, there are at least two city commission candidates backed by the unions who've already filed their paperwork to put that lingering animus to work for them as they challenge incumbent commissioners Heidi O'Sheehan from District 3 and Richard Blattner of District 4.
Owing to election changes necessitated by the successful passage of a charter issue by Hollywood voters, rather than having staggered elections this year, ALL six city commissioners and Mayor Peter Bober are up for re-election this November, with only Comm. Fran Russo publicly announcing that she will be not be seeking re-election in District 5, which consists of most of Hollywood west of the Florida Turnpike.
For a few observers in the Hollywood Commission chambers who were really paying attention to the larger public policy picture last Friday -like your humble blogger, for instance- the real news of the day lay more in who was completely missing from the Commission chambers rather than the selection of the certain someone who might soon be calling it home.
That is to say, noticeable by their collective absence.
Indeed, as Sherlock Holmes is forever reminding us, the absence of evidence is, in fact, evidence of a sort.
Showing that the old bad habits of last year that we have remarked upon so many times here on the blog -and in animated conversations and emails with so many of you readers- that have left so many tens of thousands of concerned South Florida residents quite literally appalled at what passes for news coverage at Miami's English and Spanish-speaking TV stations, were, in fact, NOT left behind in the dust-bin of history after all, even while more traditional subjects are shunted aside, Miami's CBS4, NBC6, WSVN-TV 7 & Local 10 News were all no-shows at Hollywood City Hall.
As were their Spanish-speaking colleagues at local TV news outlets at Channels 23, 41 and 51, despite the fact that there are lots of Spanish-speaking residents in Hollywood.
But yours truly videotaped the entire proceedings, as well as Thursday night's public get-together of the six final candidates at Hollywood's Arts & Culture Center on Harrison Street.
I plan on posting the comments that I videotaped last Thursday night by CM-designate Doug Hewett and his presentation of Friday afternoon on my blog and YouTube Channel within the next few days.
I'll need to do some editing first and break up his presentation into 3 or 4 segments, since his presentation was the longest, albeit, also the most interesting one to listen to.
Former McKinney, TX City Manager Frank Ragan received the second-most votes last Friday afternoon and was a very compelling candidate, with lots of tangible qualities and talents that surely would've helped Hollywood, based on his impressive resume and facility for talking about his accomplishments without any un-necessary boasting.
He particularly grabbed the full attention of Hollywood Commissioners Linda Sherwood and Richard Blattner, who voted for him on the first ballot.
Yes, I wish he were already the City Manager in Hallandale Beach, where Mark Antonio will be leaving in June.
Above and below, Frank Ragan addresses the Hollywood City Commission and makes his formal presentation. On the dais, left-to-right, Commissioners Patricia Asseff, Beam Furr, Heidi O'Sheehan, Mayor Peter Bober, Commissioners Richard Blattner, Fran Russo and Linda Sherwood. January 6, 2012 photos by South Beach Hoosier.
Personally, I wish that Ragan was already in a responsible upper-management position in either Broward County or up in Tallahassee so he could positively effectuate economic development, trade and investment policies, since the record is clear that he has the ability to see opportunities that other smart people in those positions DON'T.
I can't recall the last time I heard someone who worked for Broward or in Tallahassee say something about those subjects that really impressed me in quite the ways that Ragan, a one-time Hoosier, did in his presentation Friday, a fact that seemed to be shared by Comm. O'Sheehan.
Sen. Marco Rubio video: "We Are a Nation of Haves and Soon-to-Haves." Sen. Rubio offers his perspectives on his first year in office and the challenges that remain unsolved going into 2012. December 16, 2011. http://youtu.be/WiKrCUiP-fg
Follow-up to the Mainstream Media's scrum re Univision's attempted blackmail of Sen. Marco Rubio -man bites dog, journalism watchdog bites newspaper, NOT offending Mexican-based TV network that provoked ethical contretemps
What follows is part of an email that I sent out last Thursday as the logical if not-always well-understood follow-up to the Mainstream Media's scrum re Univision's attempted blackmail of Sen. Marco Rubio.
What makes this particular media case unusual is that it's a true case of 'man-bites-dog,' in that a New York-based journalism group that once upon a time enjoyed a largely esteemed reputation across the country for journalism probity and a watchdog-like concern for ethical shortcuts and laxness within the industry, has instead consciously chosen to attack a newspaper and not aim its barbs at the Mexican-based TV network that once again has revealed its true colors as a redoubt for faux-journalism that would be unacceptable in most American newsrooms, no matter how small, no matter how politically parochial.
Two days before veteran Florida reporter and institutional memory Marc Caputo's pointed rebuttal piece ran in the Miami Herald's political blog last Thursday, the following was reported in The Huffington Post, which in my experience is not always the most reliable of news sources, given its unctuous quotient.
(I had already read the original cites before coming across this.)
The Huffington Post
Marco Rubio And Univision Feud Sparks Disagreement Between New Yorker And Miami Herald
First Posted: 1/4/12 01:52 PM ET
Updated: 1/4/12 06:36 PM ET
A feud between America's most prominent Hispanic Republican, Marco Rubio, and America's most popular Hispanic network, Univision, is now a debate between the Miami Herald and the New Yorker.
Last summer, Univision aired a story about the 1987 drug-trafficking bust of Rubio's brother-in-law. In October, the Miami Herald ran a front page story that Univision executives tried to blackmail Rubio with the information in exchange for his appearance on their "Meet the Press"-type show.
Of darts and hypocrisy: CJR's falsehoods and omissions in Marco Rubio-Univision-Herald flap Marc Caputo on January 6, 2012
After a high-profile politician repeatedly stiff-arms a TV network over an interview, the media company then dredges up a 24 year-old drug-bust story about his brother-in-law. It runs in prime time. Even its viewers bash the story.
A newspaper later reports a behind-the-scenes tussle over the story: The network's news chief allegedly offered a deal to soften or kill the drug-bust story if the politician gave the long-sought interview. The news chief denies the allegation.
To the Columbia Journalism Review's Erika Fry, it was clear who deserved the most-jaundiced look: The newspaper, The Miami Herald & El Nuevo Herald.
Pow! Former Dem. congressman Artur Davis of Alabama slices-and-dices, marinates and sautés the N.Y. Times' Andy Rosenthal in the National Review Online. Delicious!
But first, the necessary predicate, which I sent some of you the day it appeared in The Post:
The Washington Post The Fix blog Former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis talks party-switching Posted by Aaron Blake at 03:18 PM ET, 12/30/2011
Former Democratic congressman Artur Davis, who has been a thorn in the side of Democrats in the aftermath of his loss in the 2010 Alabama gubernatorial primary, is a man without a political party.
In an interview with The Fix, Davis openly speculated about running for office as an independent or even a Republican. In both cases, he suggested his decision not to make the switch has as much to do with the difficulties involved as any desire he has to remain a Democrat.
NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE Rosenthal’s Amnesia The Times columnist forgets how protesters treated LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Bush, . . . By Artur Davis January 9, 2012 4:00 A.M.
Lyndon Johnson was loathed enough that, in his final year in office, he dared not make a public appearance other than at a military base; it was commonplace for chanting crowds to gather and spray verbal obscenities at LBJ’s White House. Jimmy Carter’s presidency was a routine subject of cultural derision, some of it viciously aimed at his pre-teen daughter and his brother. Bill Clinton spawned so much hate that at least some of his adversaries spread strange rumors that he was connected to murder; then there was this thing called impeachment. George W. Bush inflamed some of his enemies enough that they carried signs crudely depicting him as a war criminal or a Hitler clone.
I mention all these instances of ugliness directed at presidents because they are apparently unknown to Andrew Rosenthal, a New York Times columnist, who caused a stir last week by implying that strident opposition to Barack Obama is racially motivated, and that it’s all part of a racist tide building in advance of the November elections.
In case you forgot who ran that race-based ad campaign against Bobby Jindal in 2003 that's mentioned in the article above, it was Kathleen Babineaux Blanco.
POLITICO Artur Davis: From Dem star to exile By: Alex Isenstadt December 1, 2011 11:37 PM EST
The future once seemed limitless for Artur Davis.
Not so long ago, he was viewed as one of the Democratic Party’s rising stars, routinely evoking comparisons to Barack Obama. A smart, ambitious Harvard Law School graduate like Obama, Davis appeared to be on a trajectory to make history as Alabama’s first black governor. Some saw the youthful congressman as a future attorney general.
Anyone who's well-read, with a lick of common sense and possessed of an open mind, and who has spent any serious amount of time living and working in the Washington, D.C. area, knows almost from osmosis that nobody-but-nobody is EVER more popular with the ranks of the Beltway's permanent Democratic-leaning Mainstream Media than a Republican former insider or power-broker who says positive things about the Democratic Party's policies, or, who attacks another prominent Republican, the better-known the better.
This explains the recent phenomena the past three months of appearances on U.S. network TV and the cablenets by former GOP House members, staffers and party officials from the 1990's, many of whom had completely fallen off the MSM's radar, so long as they have something negative to say about Newt Gingrich, even if they owe their own rise from complete obscurity to prominence to Newt. (That is, if you believe that nobody from Romney's PAC was involved in any way with coordinating this shopping of these anti-Newt/pro-Republican establishment types to make it easier for the MSM to find them.)
Conversely, nobody is ever treated more like a leper by the MSM than a Democrat who decides -whether out of an overabundance of backbone, bluster, spite or some other reason- to pop-open the hood of the post-Clinton Democratic Party and take a hard look at the role of their pals in the race-identity politics movement and SEIU by performing a LIVE autopsy. Nobody wants to see under the hood and see the meat being made.
Fox News video: Daily Caller reporter Michelle Fields discusses proposed voter ID laws and former AL congressman Artur Davis says via videotape that he believes voter fraud is more present in the absentee ballot process than it is at the actual voting booth, and relates the experience in Alabama.
This is a logical and necessary follow-up to my earlier post of today titled, Broward cities need tougher ethics laws, not self-serving pols like Gary Resnick & Debby Eisinger, whom we need like more bad restaurants, more ruined-views of the beach... -NOT at all!
I had hoped to incorporate what follows into that last blog post, but for a variety of reasons, came to realize that I'd not be able to do so, so consider this post a bit of a coda to that last post on the question of ethics in Broward County at the municipal level.
Since this blog was first created five years ago this month, I've had certain key anchors or guideposts that have stubbornly remained on it, despite how much space they take up, or how much criticism I have received from others who complained about my keeping them here. They are there to indicate to first-time readers that this blog, regardless of whatever particular subject matter I'm writing about on that day, or whatever subject may've led the visitor to come here in the first place via a search engine, is committed to certain things.
Stricter, easier to-understand and more-enforceable common sense ethics laws -with teeth!- in state, county and local government is one of those basic elements I support and am personally committed to.
That sentiment is best captured by one anchor in particular that recounts a moment I bore witness to more than three years ago here in Hallandale Beach, and which I re-post here to make the larger point about elected municipal officials aversion to increased public scrutiny and tighter laws that maintain an ethical floor beyond which there is no publicly acceptable conduct and behavior:
"WHY DO THEY NEED THAT IN THE BROWARD COUNTY CHARTER?"
"Laws and Constitutions go for nothing where the general sentiment is corrupt." -New York Times, September 22, 1851
"Why do they need that in the Broward County charter?"-Hallandale Beach Mayor Joy Cooper at April 2, 2008 HB City Commission meeting in discussing possible inclusion of Broward County Charter Review Commission's proposal for Ethics Commission to deal with Broward County Commission on November 2008 ballot.
Six YEARS after the county's voters had overwhelmingly passed an amendment to the County charter requiring its adoption, the Broward County Commission had yet to live up to its legal responsibility. That's why!
As problematic as Cooper and her regal and all-too-frequently condescending attitude have been and continue to be for concerned taxpayer citizens in Hallandale Beach, it's not just Joy Cooper, of course, who is the problem in Broward when it comes to notions of public accountability and transparency, it's the veritable phalanx of willing elected officials and their friends, acquaintances and family members who are contractors or lobbyists in Broward, who willingly want to make like Gen. George Patton and drive a tank thru any possible weak spots -loopholes- and keep it open for good, that are the problem.
Another elected municipal official in Broward who, like Joy Cooper, has seemingly had her doubts for years about stricter ethics laws and what the public was entitled to expect from people in authority is someone whom I've written about a number of times here, Cooper City Mayor Debby Eisinger.
Eisinger's very visible antipathy towards stricter ethics laws is NOT just a recent thing, nor is it a function of her and her colleagues in Cooper City having been involved in so many disturbing and ethically-questionable situations over the recent past that have made her fodder for local TV and newspaper reporters, who barely had to say much more than tell the basic facts or roll the hidden camera video, before readers and viewers were recoiling at the thought of what she and her pals were doing.
Most notably, the commission's former habit of routinely getting together for drinks at public establishments in the Cooper City area -before scheduled City Commission meetings.
You don't have to be paranoid to understand that serious questions arise about the very appearance of such get-togethers, much less, if you are a legitimate party with an item on their agenda that night or just a regular concerned citizen wishing to speak about that agenda, who reasonably wonders what might have been discussed about that item away from any public scrutiny, in violation of Sunshine Laws, and without you having any means of rebutting what was said, especially something factually inaccurate or intentionally misleading.
And what about the complete lack of any initial apparent remorse on their part when they were caught in 2006 by Channel 4 News/WFOR-TV, and the video of some members the Commission, including Eisinger and some of her acolytes in a bar, was a CBS4 sensation, one that was both self-evident and a jaw-dropping tale of un-democratic notions of privilege and refusing to follow the existing laws, simple as they were.
For me, this point was brought home thru Eisinger's own choice of words and her arguments as a member of the Broward County Charter Review Commission a few years ago, many of whose meetings I attended in-person, including the final meeting that decided what would and would not appear on the November 2008 ballot.
It should not come as a shock to anyone that despite how much I had followed their activities closely, my mouth was often agape at the things I heard and the condescending points-of-view I heard expressed at those meetings among what were said to be a good cross-section of Broward's leading lights. Repeatedly.
Consider this exchange from 2007, direct from the Summary Minutes of Discussion, Broward County Charter Review Commission, Administrative Issues/Governance Subcommittee Meeting of Tuesday, August 15, 2007
Ms. Eisinger stated that the format of Strong Mayor or Elected Executive is that that Mayor is in charge. She stated in certain circumstances it could work well, but she can’t support it because you don’t know who is going to be that Mayor, and it is going to be left up to the Electorate.
She explained that sometimes the voters don’t always know who is the most qualified. She advised that it becomes a popularity contest and who runs the best campaign, and is not necessarily the most qualified.
As I've stated here on the blog several times previously -and keeping the info above in mind as yet more of the same from her- it should come as no surprise that when push came to shove on the question of whether or not Broward voters could be treated like adults and decide for themselves whether they wanted to have an elected county-wide mayor of Broward County, not continue the charade of county commissioners voting for one another as mayor for one year, Cooper City Mayor Debby Eisinger voted to deny Broward voters that choice.
How does an elected public official justify voting against elections that allow citizens to determine their own form of govt. structure?
Exactly, but that's just what Debby Eisinger did.
Yes, whether as mayor of Cooper City or as the current President of the Broward League of Cities, Eisinger's demonstrated track record of anti-democratic behavior and votes against increased public accountability is clear for all to see.
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
Broward Politics blog
Cooper City Mayor Eisenger to charities: Complain about county ethics law
By Brittany Wallman
October 10, 2011 02:34 PM
Broward League of Cities President Debby Eisenger sent out an email to non-profit groups in Broward, urging them to complain -- if they so wish-- about the coming new public ethics law.
It was sent to "various non-profits,'' League Executive Director Rhonda Calhoun told her mass e-mail list recipients.
And as I mentioned in my last post, given the above, and the unanimous vote in October by the Broward County Commission to have these necessary tougher ethical standards hold sway at local city halls, Eisinger actually has the chutzpah to drop this memorable quote in last Saturday's Ariel Barkhurst article:
South Florida Sun-Sentinel
County ethics law already changing Broward's city governments
"I've already seen people backing off from being involved in charity," said Cooper City Mayor Debbie Eisinger.
Yeah, I wonder why?
Hmm-m... perhaps it has to do with your own orchestrated campaign...
It's like Eisinger, after all that she has done, is in such denial that she can't even admit to herself that she was NOT part of the reform effort to fix the longstanding problems, like my friend, Charlotte Greenbarg, president of the Broward Coalition, Eisinger was part of the crony capitalism crew desperately trying to sabotage the effort to give Broward voters what they have been clamoring for for years.
(But then as the only member of the public in all of Broward to actually attend that first meeting of the IG Task Force last year, that later chose John W. Scott, I'm in a position to know what I'm talking about, which is why I can mention that there were no members of the news media present at that first meeting. Surprise!)
And lest we forget, when she was on the Charter Review Comm. she actually tried to make the lack of funding for an Inspector General's office the problem.
Take note folks, Debby Eisinger never quits trying to sabotage things for the worse for citizens in Broward County who are interested in genuine transparency, accountability and ethical probity.
And from the looks of things, she shows no evidence of losing that condescending attitude and smirk of hers, either.
Citizen'sFree Speech Quashed By Cooper City, FL Commission
Plus, to better understand how insidious the corrupt political culture is here in Broward, take a look at this one on the doings of so-called ethics watchdogs:
CBS4 News video: Correspondent Carey Codd speaks with Broward's new Inspector General, John W. Scott, on his responsibilities in a county that has seen a tremendous number of corrupt county and municipal elected officials. September 14, 2011. http://broward.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?clip_id=700
Office of the Broward Inspector General
One North University Drive, Suite 111, Plantation, FL 33324
